Catalyst
by notmagnificent
Summary: 'For a second the universe was that intense, sparkling blue. The color of the ocean, cornflowers in the summer, sweet baby's breath. The color of her eyes.' Lots of angst! Inspired by 'Wires and the Concept of Breathing' by A Skylit Drive.


**-EDIT-**

**Okay, so the format of the opening was screwing itself up in Safari (at least for me, anyways), so I decided to re-upload this fic to see if that would fix it. I changed nothing in the body.**

**---**

**Me: I worship you, O great betareader and co-writer, who fixes my pathetic attempts at lofty language.  
Stephy Newton: And I you, my lovely friend, who cultivated this work of art from the simple seeds of 'Wires and the Concept of Breathing," played by A Skylit Drive.  
Me: But thou art the water for my fields which doth help them grow.  
Stephy: All right, can the Shakespeare. I already attend English for forty-five minutes every day.  
Me: Fine. Now I can actually explain this thing. Okay, so it bothers me when characters in fics are always comforted in the sight of their loved one's eyes or hair or something when they're dead. If Brennan died some horrible bloody death, I would figure that her body covered in blood would be the only thing Booth could possibly think of, right?  
Stephy: Makes sense.  
Me: Really?  
Stephy: No.  
Me: Fine. Well, enjoy anyways.**

_**---  
The hiding place where I sought out your eyes  
Screaming outwards to shoot me back in time  
---**_

_Here lies Temperance Brennan, who with perfect sweetness balanced her intelligence and her love, a dynamic and beautiful blessing to all whom she knew.  
1977 - 2008_

He lamented in that simple stone, that quick and beautiful inscription (written by Angela, of course), and the painful numbers set in stone.

Booth looked away from the windshield in front of his face and clung to some vestige of his lost love. He tried once more what he had failed to do a million times, shutting his eyes and swallowing the lump in his throat.

And he thought he could do it this time. He could do it.

It worked, because for a second the universe was that intense, sparkling blue. The color of the ocean, cornflowers in the summer, sweet baby's breath. The color of her eyes.

He remembered the deep indigo blouse that she wore on that first day, and the way it felt beneath his calloused hands as he pressed her against the wall and peeled it off her. The way it turned her shining irises a pale turquoise color when she looked at him.

_The way she looked at him._

His mind's eye met her azure ones, swimming in their beauty. And out of nowhere, a single drop of red landed directly in the center of her pupil, a perfect bullseye.

All of a sudden, Overwhelming Loss's white-hot knife dug deep into his chest and started sawing downwards toward his navel. His cold hands clenched harder around the steering wheel as an agonizing scream ripped the air in two.

The wheel begun pulsating beneath his frost-bitten grip, and for some strange reason, the car behind his started with the livid bang of a 9mm Glock pistol instead of the disgruntled rumble of a freezing engine. His head snapped up to the sight of a fountain of crimson blood pouring from the little hole that appeared in the horn, and Booth panicked. He pressed his hands to the wound with firm pressure, and her scream echoed in his eardrums.

He looked up from his hands and met her eyes, the almost luminescent metal surfaces of the lab platform now floating in the background. He could physically feel her sharp steel blue gaze slicing his skull in two.

She pushed one word out of her mouth: "Booth."

He looked back to his hands; she was cutting too deep now, too fast. The sensation of thick, hot blood worming through his fingers sent a shiver racing up his spine.

"It's okay, Bones," he blurted, all reason having spilled from the incision in his head. "You'll be fine."

At that moment, God suddenly adopted a very macabre sense of humour, because he felt her heart skip a beat.

_Too fast,_ he mumbled in his mind.

Then another.

_Time is too fast._

And another.

_Slow down._

His eyes flicked up to her face and saw her delicate lids fluttering as two dying butterflies in the final throes.

It's amazing how butterflies can hurt even more than stainless steel.

His hands snapped away from her chest while his mouth opened wide for a silent scream; pain's greedy hand had long since stolen his voice. He felt the slinky boa constrictor of loss slowly snaking around his shock-still body.

Slowly, the muscles in her neck loosened and her head fell to the side, and Booth decided that the things he saw in the army weren't so horrible.

Because when her cold, dead head turned to him, her eyes remained wide open, a speck of blood dotting the center of her pupil.

His eyelids fused together and he let out a wretched cry; if he had never known agony, he was sure they were well-acquainted now. He bent his head low and released scream after bloody scream, tears pouring down his face and further soaking her delicate body, pressing his burning hand against her icy flesh.

---

The minutes passed.

Ten.

Twenty.

Thirty.

Forty.

Booth opened his eyes.

The rivers of fire running through his veins had slowly cooled and left Booth with the feeling of thick numbness when he came to.

_It wasn't real,_ he thought. _But it was._

The pain. That was real. And the puddles of blood, growing on the floor like some terrible ivy plant up a trellis. Those were much too real. And what just happened. That was not real, but it _did _happen. It most definitely happened, and so in a way it was the most real of them all.

Her blue eyes invaded his vision again, squeezing his heart with a vise grip. Funny how he tried so hard to picture them until now, and at the moment all he wanted was to never see those eyes again. But sadly, they were stuck as two crystalline mosquitoes forever suspended in a drop of amber.

And as Booth pressed on the gas pedal and pulled away from the curb, those shining eyes winked at him and caused his lip to curl and his eyes to narrow in cold, bloodless pain.

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**-fake tear rolls down cheek-**


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